Befitting his nice-guy status in real life, Karl Malden won an Oscar and was nominated for sympathetic roles in a pair of classics directed by Elia Kazan and headlined by Marlon Brando: A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954). No wonder he was the guy American Express trusted to hawk their plastic.

It was a good year for movie buffs: Criterion brought out 15-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz and a marvelous box set of works from Japan's Yasujiro Ozu. There also was Fox's John Ford box, Sony's Johnny Cash TV collections and sports galore. USA TODAY shares his list of vintage titles he was most happy to see come out on DVD in 2007, in alphabetical order:

Hard Candy, now in theaters, is the kind of potent revenge pic that makes a guy want to employ the Internet only to check baseball stats. It brings to mind other movies about just deserts or at least the attempt to cook them up. USA TODAY's Mike Clark offers three favorites.

Karl Malden, the gruff, fatherly character actor who won an Academy Award for A Streetcar Named Desire, will receive a special honor from The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut for his lifetime of stage work.